Charity worker tells how she has built bridges between Edinburgh's gypsy travelling community and the outside world

FOR the most part, groups of gypsy travellers are thought to keep to themselves but Mhairi Craig is a fine example of someone who has come from outside the travelling community to live and thrive within it.

He is being educated a few hours a week, on site, by a tutor from the council.

Evelyn said: “We don’t want the children to go to secondary school. There are too many drugs and bad influences. They need to learn about their culture and our ways.”

Every summer they take the caravan and head north to meet family and feel the freedom of the road.

The travelling community have been part of Scotland’s landscape for centuries, yet they are still treated with suspicion.

Mhairi Craig, from Shelter Scotland is a support and development worker, who has been a link between this community and the outside world since 2009.

Mhairi said: “There is still a lot of intolerance, a lot of discrimination, which would never be tolerated against other races. It still seems to be thought of as okay, to use words like ‘pikey’ and ‘gypo’.”

The Equality Act 2010 protects Gypsy Travellers from discrimination, recognising them as a distinct ethnic group but the law is rarely enforced.

Cathy, a resident at North Cairntow traveller's site near Edinburgh, cooking on a stove (Image: Daily Record)

Mhairi said: “The prejudice has not been challenged enough and the travelling community is so used to being treated badly that they don’t feel that they can do anything about it. I get annoyed because there are things that can be done.

“They will still not send their kids to school because they will get bullied. It is being challenged at schools but probably still not enough.”

When Mhairi started the job, she didn’t know what to expect.

She said: “I think the people surprised me in a nice way. When you are there to help them and not be against them, they are lovely. In all the time I have worked with them, I have had no trouble.”

Mhairi acts as a vital link between the travellers and frontline services of the council, government and health services.

She said: “A lot of the issues are not so different from everyone else. Paying for the food, the heating and sending their kids to school. Kids are the most important thing in the world to them.

“The travelling community is isolated and tend not to engage with services. Sometimes they do get defensive but there is a reason for that. Historically they have been treated very badly.

Mhairi Craig of Shelter Scotland at North Cairntow traveller's site near Edinburgh. (Image: Daily Record)

“I try hard to be a voice for them, to make sure their concerns are heard and taken seriously. It’s taken years to build that trust. The travellers know I have their best interests at heart.

“The trust and respect we’ve developed haven’t come over night, but the effort of building such firm foundations has been worth it.

“I speak my mind and am totally upfront about what I can and can’t do. I don’t make false promises, I show respect. If I don’t agree with something they’re doing or want me to take up on their behalf, I’ll say so. They respect me for that.”

Many of the older generation, and the young, are illiterate and Mhairi will read letters and fill out forms. She will attend appointments with them and be by their side as an advocate.

Poor literacy and prejudice makes it harder for them to access benefits and even a bank account.

Accessing basic services like health has also been ad hoc. Life expectancy for traveller men and women is 10 years lower than the national average and the community’s mothers are 20 times more likely than the rest of the population to have experienced the death of a child.

As Evelyn points out, sites are usually out of the way, pylons loom over Dalkeith Old Colliery while others are next to landfills, railways or recycling centres.

Old Dalkeith has porta cabins housing new washrooms, toilets and small kitchens.

There are 16 pitches on Old Dalkeith, housing 10 families and there are 20 pitches towards Edinburgh at North Cairntow, Duddingston.

The Old Dalkeith Colliery traveller's site near Whitecraig (Image: Daily Record)

The rent of one pitch there is the same as a one-bedroom flat in Edinburgh.

There, Kathy, 39, a mother of five, remembers being spat on as a child.

When her brother was seven he knocked over his custard and cake in the school dining hall and the dinner lady scraped it off the floor and made him eat it.

Outside her caravan she shows us a century old iron pot, bubbling over a wood burning fire.

She said: “I love using the old pots, it’s a link to the past. I love wandering off in the summer and cooking a big pot of ham and potatoes outside.

“I stayed in a house once but it was too claustrophobic. I would never change this way of life, it’s all I know.”

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